{"id":44887,"date":"2014-03-19T08:23:23","date_gmt":"2014-03-19T12:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=44887"},"modified":"2014-03-19T11:44:57","modified_gmt":"2014-03-19T15:44:57","slug":"time-is-on-your-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2014\/03\/19\/time-is-on-your-side\/","title":{"rendered":"time is on their side…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Instead of paying doctors to promote their drugs, GlaxoSmithKline has decided to pay doctors to promote their drugs.<\/p>\n

Yeah, you read that right…<\/em> <\/div>\n
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Glaxo to Bring Doctors In-House as Educational Speakers<\/a><\/div>\n
Bloomberg<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
By Makiko Kitamura<\/div>\n
Mar 17, 2014<\/div>\n

GlaxoSmithKline plans to hire doctors to educate their peers about its drugs instead of paying external speakers, a further change to its marketing practices following a record fraud settlement in the U.S. The drugmaker is also investing in improving its multichannel marketing strategy through media such as online streaming of educational content, Deirdre Connelly, head of Glaxo’s U.S. pharmaceuticals business, said in an interview in Philadelphia. The changes come at a time when London-based Glaxo is introducing products recently approved to treat skin cancer, HIV and respiratory diseases. <\/p>\n

Glaxo has been reforming marketing practices to improve its reputation. In 2012, the company agreed to pay $3 billion to settle allegations that it illegally promoted its Paxil and Wellbutrin anti-depressants and failed to report safety data on the Avandia diabetes drug. Hiring doctors and medical experts to speak as in-house representatives of Glaxo will provide more transparency, Connelly said. <\/p>\n

“We’ll continue to disseminate this very important information on drug benefits and risks, but we’re just not going to do that by hiring external speakers,” she said. “We want to ensure that no one even perceives us to be doing anything wrong.” Glaxo plans to hire a range of people with medical backgrounds, including doctors and scientists with expertise in specific disease areas, though how many is still unclear, according to the company. It will be fewer than the number of external speakers the company has employed, Connelly said. In December, Glaxo said that it will stop paying doctors for giving speeches and attending medical meetings by early 2016…<\/div>\n
hat tip to<\/font><\/strong> pharmagossip<\/a>… <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Why it seems like only yesterday when GSK announced a change in policy…<\/div>\n
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Glaxo Says It Will Stop Paying Doctors to Promote Drugs<\/a><\/div>\n
New York Times <\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
By KATIE THOMAS<\/div>\n
December 16, 2013<\/div>\n

The British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline will no longer pay doctors to promote its products and will stop tying compensation of sales representatives to the number of prescriptions doctors write, its chief executive said Monday, effectively ending two common industry practices that critics have long assailed as troublesome conflicts of interest. Andrew Witty, Glaxo’s chief executive, said the changes are part of an effort to “to try and make sure we stay in step with how the world is changing.”<\/p>\n

The announcement appears to be a first for a major drug company — although others may be considering similar moves — and it comes at a particularly sensitive time for Glaxo. It is the subject of a bribery investigation in China, where authorities contend the company funneled illegal payments to doctors and government officials in an effort to lift drug sales…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Perhaps the most overused quip in all of this PHARMA business is, "You can’t make this stuff up<\/em>." In my last post [in the first place?…<\/a>], I was reporting on Dr. Poses’ clear parsing of Boehringer-Ingelheim’ prestidigitation<\/em> by using the same study to both high-ball and low-ball Pradaxa®’s <\/font>Adverse Effect data by separating the two usages in time. Here, another creative usage in time. This time, GSK rolls out two announcements that cancel each other separated by three months – both touted as reform.<\/div>\n

I grew up in a family football built. My father, a small man, grew up in an immigrant family of coal miners. He escaped that fate by being the best football player ever seen in those parts, a skill he parlayed into an atheletic scholarship. After college, he became a coach for a time, which is when I came into the story – a very winning coach at that. Afterwards, he continued for years as a Scout<\/em>. That meant that on weekends, we often were off in the car to scout<\/em> the teams that the colleges that hired him were to play the next week. He had a notebook that he wrote in all through the game. It said things like, "They always run to the wide side of the field<\/em>." or "The left guard usually lines up glancing to the side where they’re going to run<\/em>." "If the left guard looks straight ahead, it’s a pass<\/em>." Pages and pages. Needless to say, my dad was in high demand. After football, he managed a huge woolen mill, where he "coached<\/em>" production. Another notebook. "If you backlogged too much wool to be spun, the spinners work slowly because there’s no chance they’ll ever catch up. But if you backlog just a little more than they can do, they speed way up<\/em>." I often think of him when I read these PHARMA marketing ploys. While he was more or less an honest guy, he saw the IRS as an opposing team – fair game. He was an ace as a barterer. So without knowing exactly why, I avoided competitive sports and anything that had to do with business or strategizing. I pay the sticker price for cars and have always farmed my taxes out to some hyper-moral accountant. How hard is that to analyze?<\/p>\n

The marketing departments of PHARMA are paid full time to do this kind of strategizing. It’s what they think about every day. I’ll bet they’d make fine football scouts<\/em>. And I’ll bet they don’t think this kind of strategic thinking is dishonest. It’s just part of playing the game well – an end unto itself. "How do we squeeze the most profit out of Lurasidone? I know. Let’s get it approved for Bipolar Depression. When we advertise it, they’ll just see the word "Depression" and "Ask their doctor if Latuda® is right for them.<\/em>" "Look Sir Andrew, if we separate these announcements by three months, it won’t look like we’re just doing the same thing in a different way<\/em>." <\/p>\n

We have only two choices:<\/div>\n